Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Quotes By Elder Jeffery R. Holland

Called in 1994, Elder Jeffery R. Holland currently serves as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Holland has authored many books including, Broken Things to Mend and To Mothers: Carrying the Torch of Faith and Family. Elder Holland is known for his quick wit, his tender approach toward gospel topics, and his extensive knowledge of English literature.

Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

Let me suggest another matter on this whole subject of early, powerful, doctrinal declarations of Christ. I am intrigued that more than four-fifths of the Book of Mormon – 86 percent by actual page count – comes out of a period before Christ’s personal appearance to the Nephites in his resurrected state. I am deeply moved by that simple little statistic. I am profoundly touched by it. What faith! And what a way to teach us faith. You and I are expected to have faith in a Christ who has already come and lived and walked and talked and been crucified and resurrected. And we have witnesses, believers and non-believers, who saw him and heard him, who touched the hem of his garment on one day and felt the wounds in his hands and feet and side on another.

But these early Book of Mormon people? This keystone record of ours? It deals in remarkable faith of a very special kind, greater, it seems to me, than you and I are asked to exert. They had (at least 458 pages worth of them had) not a Christ who had come in the flesh but only the trust and consummate hope that such a Christ would come – far in the future and after most of them were dead. What godly, believing, stalwart people. I am moved to the center of my soul. And I feel ashamed for our post-advent generations who have so many witnesses and so much evidence but still do not wish to believe.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | BYU Symposium on the Book of Mormon, 9 August 1994

Topics: Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ

“It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "None Were With Him," Conference April 2009

Topics: Atonement, Jesus Christ, Loneliness

A young returned missionary sister from Hong Kong told me recently that when she and her companion asked an investigator if she believed in God, the woman replied, “I didn’t until I met a member of your church and observed how she lived.” What exemplary missionary work! Asking every member to be a missionary is not nearly as crucial as asking every member to be a member! Thank you for living the gospel.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Witnesses unto Me"

Topics: Conversion, Missionary Work & Preparation, Mormon Culture

Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Created for Greater Things

Topics: Family, Kindness, Love, Marriage, Short Quotes

God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Created for Greater Things

Topics: Becoming like God, Change, Decisions, Discipleship, Forgiveness, Goals, Growth, Heavenly Father, Inspirational Quotes, Mercy, Perfection, Plan of Salvation, Potential, Repentance, Self-mastery, Short Quotes

Your Father in heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance. He hears your prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations. And He knows what you can become through faith in Him.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Created for Greater Things

Topics: Faith, Heavenly Father, Hope, Prayer, Self-mastery, Trials

“The crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Topics: Dating & Courtship, Love, Marriage

“You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness. If there is one lament I cannot abide, it is the poor, withered cry, ‘Well, that’s just the way that I am.’ I’ve heard it from too many people who want to sin and call it psychology. You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. Another satanic sucker punch is that it takes years and years and eons and eons to repent. That’s just not true. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, ‘Ill change’ and mean it. Of course, there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make…but change, growth, renewal , and repentance can come to you as instantaneously as for Alma.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | For Times of Trouble

Topics: Change, Forgiveness, Inspirational Quotes, Motivational Quotes, Repentance

“People do not join the Church because of what they know. They join because of what they feel, what they see and want spiritually. Our spirit of testimony and happiness in that regard will come through to others if we let it. As the Lord said to Alma and the sons of Mosiah, ‘Go forth…that ye may show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls’ (Alma 17:11).”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Broken Thing to Mend"

Topics: Example, Missionary Work & Preparation

“God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future — to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Broken Things to Mend"

Topics: Attitude, Inspirational Quotes, Motivational Quotes

“So be kind, and be grateful that God is kind. It is a happy way to live.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "The Laborers in the Vineyard"

Topics: Gratitude & Thanksgiving, Kindness, Nature of God

If you are lonely, please know you can find comfort. If you are discouraged, please know you can find hope. If you are poor in spirit, please know you can be strengthened. If you feel you are broken, please know you can be mended.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Created for Greater Things

Topics: Inspirational Quotes, Trials

“As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth?

“Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor.9 Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Safety for the Soul," Conference October 2009

Topics: Book of Mormon, Restoration, Testimony

“It [Missionary work] is by definition the most important thing you can do in the world, in time or eternity. For this reason you are engaged in the saving of the human soul. And that is the highest and holiest work in the universe. That is the thing that God Himself said was His work and glory. It is the purpose for which the Savior came to the earth and gave His life and was resurrected to open those possibilities and promises of Eternal Life. It is the purpose for which every prophet has lived and every apostle has spoken. It is the purpose for which every missionary since Adam and Eve has gone forth to declare the truth. You join those ranks! You join that brotherhood and sisterhood and it is as I said by definition, by theology, it is the most important thing you can do.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “The Miracle of a Mission”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation, Salvation

“There are several reasons for bearing testimony. One is that when you declare the truth, it will bring an echo, a memory, even if it is an unconscious memory to the investigator, that they have heard this truth before—and of course they have. A missionary’s testimony invokes a great legacy of testimony dating back to the councils in heaven before this world was. There, in an earlier place, these same people heard this same plan outlined and heard there the role that Jesus Christ would play in their salvation…

“So the fact of the matter is investigators are not only hearing our testimony of Christ, but they are hearing echoes of other, earlier testimonies, including their own testimony of Him, for they were on the side of the faithful who kept their first estate and earned the privilege of a second estate. We must always remember that these investigators, every man, woman, and child, were among the valiant who once overcame Satan by the power of their testimony of Christ! So when they hear others bear that witness of Christ’s saving mission, it has a familiar feeling; it brings an echo of truth they themselves already know.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Missionary Work and the Atonement

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation, Testimony

“When He says to the poor in spirit, ‘Come unto me,’ He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Broken Things to Mend"

Topics: Jesus Christ, Motivational Quotes

“Yes, life has its problems and yes, there are negative things to face, but please accept one of Elder Holland’s maxims for living: No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Broken Things to Mend"

Topics: Attitude, Character

“I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him?”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Missionary Work and the Atonement”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation, Salvation

“Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t it go better? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? It is the truth. We believe in angels. We trust in miracles. Why don’t people just flock to the font? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font?

“You will have occasion to ask those questions. I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Missionary Work and the Atonement

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

“I am not asking you to pretend to faith you do not have. I am asking you to be true to the faith you do have.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Lord, I Believe"

Topics: Doubt, Faith, Testimony

“. . .For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “None Were with Him,” Ensign, May 2009, 87–88

Topics: Being Spiritual & Spirituality, Death, Loneliness

When the Lord delivers this person to your view, just chat—about anything. You can’t miss. You don’t have to have a prescribed missionary message. Your faith, your happiness, the very look on your face is enough to quicken the honest in heart. Haven’t you ever heard a grandmother talk about her grandchildren? That’s what I mean—minus the photographs! The gospel will just tumble out. You won’t be able to contain yourself!

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Witnesses unto Me"

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

“Let us educate ourselves. Light is not the absence of darkness; rather, darkness is the absence of light. Light and truth exist independently. This being the case, the more light we have, the more independent we are, and the freer we are to choose. With truth lighting the way, we are able to see and make choices we otherwise couldn’t make.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "Broken Things to Mend"

Topics: Agency, Education, Truth

“If we constantly focus only on the stones in our mortal path, we will almost surely miss the beautiful flower or cool stream provided by the loving Father who outlined our journey. Each day can bring more joy than sorrow when our mortal and spiritual eyes are open to God’s goodness. Joy in the gospel is not something that begins only in the next life. It is our privilege now, this very day. We must never allow our burdens to obscure our blessings. There will always be more blessings than burdens – even if some days it doesn’t seem so. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Enjoy those blessings right now. They are yours and always will be.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Topics: Blessings, Happiness, Joy

“The Lord has probably spoken enough comforting words to supply the whole universe, and yet all we see around us are unhappy Latter-day Saints, worried Latter-day Saints, and gloomy Latter-day Saints into whose troubled hearts not one of these innumerable consoling words seems to be allowed to enter . . . on the night of Gethsemane, the night of the greatest suffering ever to take place on this world, the Savior said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you . . . let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). I submit to you, that may be one of the Savior’s commandments that is, even in the hearts of otherwise faithful Latter-Day Saints, almost universally disobeyed.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | CES Young Adult Fireside, BYU, March 2, 1997

Topics: Atonement, Attitude, Happiness, Obedience

To any who may be struggling to see that light and find that hope, I say: Hold on. Keep trying. God loves you. Things will improve.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "An High Priest of Good Things to Come"

Topics: Hope, Inspirational Quotes

Although I may not be my brother’s keeper, I am my brother’s brother…

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Are We Not All Beggars?

Topics: Charity, Integrity, Short Quotes

“First of all, if in the days ahead you not only see limitations in those around you but also find elements in your own life that don’t yet measure up to the messages you have heard this weekend, please don’t be cast down in spirit and don’t give up. The gospel, the Church, and these wonderful semiannual gatherings are intended to give hope and inspiration. They are not intended to discourage you. Only the adversary, the enemy of us all, would try to convince us that the ideals outlined in general conference are depressing and unrealistic, that people don’t really improve, that no one really progresses. And why does Lucifer give that speech? Because he knows he can’t improve, he can’t progress, that worlds without end he will never have a bright tomorrow. He is a miserable man bound by eternal limitations, and he wants you to be miserable too. Well, don’t fall for that. With the gift of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the strength of heaven to help us, we can improve, and the great thing about the gospel is we get credit for trying, even if we don’t always succeed.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders among You”

Topics: Atonement, Change, Diligence

And so I issue a call for the conviction we all must have burning in our hearts that this is the work of God and that it requires the best we can give to the effort. My appeal is that you nurture your own physical and spiritual strength so that you have a deep reservoir of faith to call upon when tasks or challenges or demands of one kind or another come. Pray a little more, study a little more, shut out the noise and shut down the clamor, enjoy nature, call down personal revelation, search your soul, and search the heavens for the testimony that led our pioneer parents. Then, when you need to reach down inside a little deeper and a little farther to face life and do your work, you will be sure there is something down there to call upon. . . .

There is work to be done. We cannot say that every one of our neighbors has deep faith, that every one has a strong family, that every one near and far has heard the gospel message and has become a believing, teaching, temple-going Latter-day Saint. The world is getting more wicked, and the times ahead will try the best of us. But the forces of righteousness will always prevail when people like Stanford and Arabella Smith, people like Samuel Claridge and his spunky daughter Elizabeth make it prevail.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Faith to Answer the Call,” Ensign, July 2011, p. 54

Topics: Nature, Testimony

Do not misunderstand. Repentance is not easy or painless or convenient. It is a bitter cup from Hell. But only Satan, who dwells there, would have you think that a necessary and required acknowledgment is more distasteful than permanent residence. Only he would say, “You can’t change. You won’t change. It’s too long and too hard to change. Give up. Give in. Don’t repent. You are just the way you are.” That, my friends, is a lie born of desperation. Don’t fall for it.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland_times-trouble/

Topics: Repentance, Satan

“The crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | (2012, November). The first great commandment. Ensign, 42(11), 83–85.

Topics: Divorce, Love

Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven–we can’t “earn” it. Thus, the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Be Ye Therefore Perfect--Eventually

Topics: Atonement, Grace, Perfection, Salvation

“Envy is a mistake that just keeps on giving. Obviously we suffer a little when some misfortune befalls us, but envy requires us to suffer all good fortune that befalls everyone we know! What a bright prospect that is—downing another quart of pickle juice every time anyone around you has a happy moment!”¹

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” Ensign, May 2012, 31–32.

Topics: Jealousy, Pride

“Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever. That is a New Year’s resolution I ask you to keep.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | The Best Is Yet to Be

Topics: Forgiveness, Goals, Miracles, Repentance

“The work of a mother is hard, too often unheralded work. Please know that it is worth it then, now, and forever.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Motherhood: An Eternal Partnership with God

Topics: Mothers & Motherhood

“We can also pray daily for our own personal missionary experiences. Pray that under the divine management of such things, the missionary opportunity you want is already being prepared in the heart of someone who longs for and looks for what you have.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Witnesses unto Me”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Witnesses Unto Me”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

“In this long eternal quest to be more like our Savior, may we try to be “perfect” men and women in at least this one way now-by offending not in word, or more positively put, by speaking with a new tongue, the tongue of angels. Our words, like our deeds, should be filled with faith and hope and charity, the three great Christian imperatives so desperately needed in the world today.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | "The Tongue of Angels", Ensign, May 2007, 16–18

Topics: Charity, Christian, Faith, Hope

May I suggest that human intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married couple, deals with a symbol that demands special sanctity.

Such an act of love between a man and a woman is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything. It is a symbol that we try to suggest in the temple with a word like seal.

The Prophet Joseph Smith once said we perhaps ought to render such a sacred bond as “welding”—that those united in matrimony and eternal families are “welded” together, inseparable if you will, to withstand the temptations of the adversary and the afflictions of mortality.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments

Topics: Marriage, Sex

“A homespun definition of Christlike character might be the integrity to do the right thing at the right time in the right way. Don’t be idle. Don’t be wasteful.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Topics: Character, Integrity, Jesus Christ

“With any major decision there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts. Certainly don’t give in to that being who is bent on the destruction of your happiness. Face your doubts. Master your fears. “Cast not away therefore your confidence” (Hebrews 10:35). Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence,” Ensign, March 2000, p. 9

Topics: Prayer, Temptation

“Physiologically, we are created as men and women to fit together in such a union. In this ultimate physical expression of one man and one woman they are as nearly and as literally “one” as two separate physical bodies can ever be. It is in that act of ultimate physical intimacy we most nearly fulfill the commandment of the Lord given to Adam and Eve, living symbols for all married couples, when he invited them to cleave unto one another only, and thus become ‘one flesh’”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Of Souls Symbols and Sacraments

Topics: Marriage, Sex

“Do you want capability, safety, and security in dating and romance, in married life and eternity? Be a true disciple of Jesus. Be a genuine, committed, word-and-deed Latter-day Saint. Believe that your faith has everything to do with your romance, because it does. You separate dating from discipleship at your peril. Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, is the only lamp by which you can successfully see the path of love and happiness. How should I love thee? As He does, for that way ‘never faileth.’”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “How Do I Love Thee?” New Era, Oct. 2003, 8.

Topics: Dating & Courtship, Discipleship, Marriage

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “The Miracle of a Mission”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

You’re the most prayed for people on the face of the earth. I really believe that. I do not believe, collectively speaking, that there is any body of people that’s any collective circle of individuals are prayed for on the face of the earth than the LDS missionaries.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “The Miracle of a Mission”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

“Some difficulties, like devils, do not come out save by fasting and by prayer.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Topics: Fasting, Prayer

Call it secularism or modernity or the technological age or existentialism on steroids—whatever you want to call such an approach to life, we do know a thing or two about it. Most important, we know that it cannot answer the yearning questions of the soul, nor is it substantial enough to sustain us in times of moral crises.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | Religion: Bound by Loving Ties

Topics: Secularism (Worldliness), Sin, Trials

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | “Missionary Work and the Atonement”

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation

“Lesson number one for the establishment of Zion in the 21st century: You never “check your religion at the door.” Not ever. My young friends, that kind of discipleship cannot be – it isn’t discipleship at all.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland | CES Devotional 2012

Topics: Discipleship

“For each of us to “come unto Christ,” to keep His commandments and follow His example back to the Father is surely the highest and holiest purpose of human existence. To help others do that as well—to teach, persuade, and prayerfully lead them to walk that path of redemption also—surely that must be the second most significant task in our lives.”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Topics: Becoming like God, Commandments, Purpose